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Markers explained

Waypoint 1, the first waypoint in the route. You can add 2 waypoints at this moment (server side limitation).

Create a route

A route is created by placing at least one Start and one Finish marker on the map. Placing a marker on the map is easy. Open the 'Route' tab and either:

Click on a green, orange or number balloon and then click somewhere on the map. You should see that a marker is places where you click on the map. Click the map again to move the marker to a different position, or drag the marker on the map.

Type a name in the searchbox and hit the Enter key. For better results you can add the place- or country-name as well to narrow the search results. The marker will be placed on the map when the search is completed successfully.

Both methods can be used in combination.
You can create a more advanced route by adding one or more Waypoints. Click the 'Add Waypoint' button and you will see a new entry in the waypoint list. Add the new Waypoint to the map just like the Start and Finish waypoint as described above. Waypoints can be reordered by dragging the balloon up and down in the list.
Click 'Find route' when you've added the Start and Finish markers (and maybe even some Waypoint markers too) on the map. The Routing Service will now try to calculate a route. The route is automatically plotted on the map when the calculation has finished.

Change the route parameters

You can change the route parameters (e.g. from 'Car' to 'Bicycle') by clicking on the radio button on the Route tab and then click the 'Find Route' button. A new route will be calculated based on the given parameters.

Partial new route (single click map/routing data testing)

If you click on the map again a new TO or FROM marker is placed. Click on 'Find Route' and the new route is calculated. This is very handy for mappers when testing the route network of a certain area. Once you've spotted a bug in the data you can click on the 'EDIT MAP' button and the online 'Potlatch' map data editor is automatically loaded in a new window/tab with the current map view.

Reverse a route

If you want to know how the return trip might look like then click on the 'Reverse' button on the 'Route' tab. All Waypoints will be reversed and a new route will be calculated.

Completely new route

Click the 'Clear' button if you want to generate a completely new route (or when things go wrong, which happens sometimes...). This should work as a reset. If the site continues to be non-functional please try a forced reload of your browser by pressing ctrl-F5.

Known issues

Gosmore is usually very quick in returning a route, often a route is calculated in under 0.1 seconds and downloading the resulting route takes more time. If it takes more then 30 seconds to calculate a route then you can assume there is some problem in the underlying OSM data and often your route won't be complete.

There is a soft maximum of 2 Waypoints (plus Start and Finish marker) due to server-side limits. If more waypoints are used then it's possible that some route segments will not be calculated.

Moped and Mofa routing currently behaves identically to car routing.

The route data is updated approximately once a week after a new planet dump is available, so it is possible that the map is not always in sync with the routing engine.

Due to lack of memory on the server, calculation time can take very long. The server is then busy loading data from the harddisk into memory which is very slow compared to reading cached data from memory. This can be a problem especially when multiple pleople are requesting routes and the routing engines are fighting for resources as a result.